Ratings

Content Ratings based on a 0-5 scale where
0 = no objectionable content and
5 = an excessive or disturbing level of content

Guide to Rating System

LANGUAGE

VIOLENCE

SEXUAL CONTENT

ADULT THEMES

2003 Printz Honor book

Ratings Explanation

Language: About 40 instances of swearing and profanity, including 3 f-words.

Violence: Prison violence related. It is stated that a man is raped in prison by several men. Minimal detail is given, but it is horrifying. The fact that men are raped is repeated a few times.

Sexual Content: On the walls of Jack’s high school there are pictures of sex organs, objects and acts carved into the wall. While he is in high school, a few  prison inmates come to speak to the students and share their stories. One of the men is in prison for sex crimes. He discovered masturbation and his behavior escalated from there. While in prison another inmate asks Jack whether he is “funny” – does he do it with other guys. The man offers to be Jack’s master and teach him. Jack receives another homosexual offer.

Adult Themes: Jack drinks as a teenager and parties nightly. He is often hungover and sick and his destructive behavior gets him kicked out of the house where he is living. He smokes pot with a friend steadily for several days and then drives. Frequent drug use. Inmates want drugs to escape mentally from their imprisonment. Jack’s family lives in St. Croix and there is a lot of racial tension there. The local population calls for the extermination of the white residents.

Synopsis

Jack Gantos had a hard row to hoe before becoming an award winning author. He spent his senior year of high school separated from his family and living in a motel in Florida. No parental supervision plus a little spending money equaled a life of partying and drugs. Following high school, Jack joined his family in St. Croix where racial tensions were high and there was very little money to be made. With college in his sights, Jack needed cash so when an offer came his way to earn $10,000 just for sailing on a ship to New York, he didn’t much care that the smuggling job could potentially land him in jail. All he thought about was the money. But after being caught, the fifteen months he spent in prison for his crime provided him plenty of time to think over his actions and plan what to do with his life once he got out – write.

After reading and really enjoying this year’s Newbery Award winner, Dead End in Norvelt, I was excited to read this autobiographical sketch by Jack Gantos. I didn’t enjoy this book, but I did appreciate the lessons he learned. He made a big mistake and he paid a high price. He makes no excuses for himself and perhaps what he learned from his experiences in prison couldn’t have been learned any other way. Written for young adults, I really hope that some of his readers will make better decisions because of this book.

The thing I loved most about Hole in my Life is that Gantos’s prison experiences eventually led him to write stories about his childhood, “stories which at one time I did not think were important, but suddenly had become to me the most important stories of all. They contained the hidden days of my innocence and happiness. And once I began retrieving the lost pleasures of my childhood, I began to write stories for children.”

I hope with all of my heart that none of my children will ever spend time in prison. This book frightened me that way. Jack’s mother is virtually absent from the story except for a vague reference here and there. I wonder how she suffered while her son was in jail. Did she write him letters or send packages? He doesn’t say, so I guess I’ll never know, but I know she cried, because any mother would.  I can recommend this book as far as a “scare them straight” book for kids headed down the wrong path, but while it could have been much worse, the prison rape and homosexuality content is distubing in my opinion. Not for young or sensitive teens.